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Wages

A study of labor costs among foreign automakers in the US shows a ten-dollar gap between the per-hour rates of the domestics and the imports. The difference between the Detroit 3 and their import competition equates to $250 more in labor costs per car for the domestics.

The United Auto Workers say that Ford is beyond its 20-percent cap of Tier 2 workers, so 55 of them will be moved to Tier 1 pay. Ford, however, says that it still has "some room to go" in the ranks of hourly employees on the lower pay scale.

West Coast Customs is in trouble with federal authorities and will be forced to pay over $150,000 thanks to charges that employees were chronically underpaid between November 2010 and January 2013, according to a report from The Press-Enterprise.

Toyota is on track for record profits, and in return, its Japanese workers are receiving their first increase in base wages since 2008, plus higher pay based on seniority and a larger bonus for 2014. The Japanese automaker predicts the average laborer will net a 2.9 percent income gain.

Omaha, we have a problem. BYD, the China-based vehicle maker that's about 10 percent owned by Warren Buffett ("The Oracle of Omaha") is facing questions about the reliability of electric buses that are targeted for use by the city of Long Beach, CA, after cracks were found in some of the buses' frames during their testing period, according to the Long Beach Business Journal. The culprit may be substandard welding on the so-called "engineering" buses specifically being used for strength testing b

The news may be flooded with stories about the lagging U.S. economy and disappointing jobs reports, but it appears there is at least one profession that could use a few more applicants. USA Today reports that there is a genuine shortage of truck drivers, and the problem is leading to pricier deliveries and longer waits on packages.

Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne has said that he hopes to end the automaker's two-tier wage structure in the company's next round of labor talks with the United Auto Workers. According to Automotive News, Marchionne said that the current system creates two classes of workers and that it isn't viable in the long term.

The next chief executive of Chrysler will be tasked with bringing the company out of bankruptcy, restructuring into a profitable business, repaying government loans (if and when they do so at all), integrating Fiat technology and retaining jobs wherever possible. Oh, and he or she will have to do it all on no more than $500,000 a year. This according to the latest reports, based on new Treasury Department regulations.

The day after Ford and the UAW reached a tentative retiree health care deal (General Motors and Chrysler are still negotiating), the leaders of the Dearborn, Michigan, automaker have announced that they will be taking a 30 percent reduction in salaries over the next two years. A memo, signed by Ford Executive Chairman William Ford Jr. and Chief Executive Alan Mulally, addresses the pay cuts and adds that Ford's board of directors will also drop their compensation for the same period of time. In

Two former hourly Toyota employees are denying that they leaked a potentially embarrassing memo pertaining to wages at Toyota's US plants. The document, which came from Seiichi Sudo, president and CEO of Toyota Motor Engineering & Manufacturing North America Inc, states that wages are growing faster than Toyota's US profits.

Could Delphi's bankruptcy
be a strategic long-term move by the parts maker? According to Business Week, Delphi has only declared
bankruptcy for its U.S. operations-- overseas facilities in Mexico, China and other countries are not affected. If the
unions and Delphi don't reach a compromise later this year, and bankruptcy courts approve the company's request to void
its union contracts, only 7,000 of the 32,000 union members would be retained. Production would then be shouldered by
the overs